Zeke and Ned (46 page)

“It's that business in Tahlequah,” the Judge said, looking down the hill at the swollen Arkansas River. It had rained somewhere upstream, and the river was in a flooded state.

“Ike, the President himself told you to do what you did,” Mart said.

“Yes, and I should have told him I resign,” the Judge confessed. “Now I've deputized a bunch of hard killers. I'll be surprised if more honest men don't die before this is over.”

Then he gave Mart a peck—he did not want her to think he was hopelessly ornery—and headed down the hill. He wanted to have a walk by the old, muddy river before he opened court for the day.

L
YLE
M
ILLER WAS TEN, AND PRONE TO DISOBEDIENCE
. H
E SLIPPED
out of the house before daylight, while his mother, Dale, was nursing the new baby. He raced down to the livestock lots, caught the colt, and was about to ride down to the creek to a place where there was a mess of crawdad nests, when he happened to look up and see the lights on the hill. Lyle enjoyed poking a stick down the crawdad holes. Sometimes the old crawdads would grab the stick with their pinchers, and he could pull them up. He carried an old can that he kept the crawdads in. His favourite trick to play on his sisters was to put crawdads under their covers. His mother had whopped him several times for doing it, but Lyle was determined to get back at his sisters for all the mean things they did to him.

Seeing lights on the hill made him forget the crawdads, for he had never seen lights on the hill that early before. It made him feel
strange. It was still misty; Lyle could not see the top of the ridge because of the mists. Once in a while, the old healing man, the one who had saved his pa when his pa had been so sick, would wander the hills with a lantern. But these lights were not made by one old man; several men with lanterns were shuffling around up in the hills among the trees.

He heard a horse nicker, and his colt nickered back.

Then his mother was there. Somehow she had slipped out of the house and caught him with the colt. He knew it meant a licking for sure. She still had the baby with her. She had slipped along so fast that the baby had lost the breast. His mother's breast was still oozing milk. Lyle was shocked at the sight, since his mother was always careful to cover herself with a shawl when she was nursing the baby.

“Ma, I was just gonna . . . ,” Lyle said, before his mother grabbed his chin, and pulled his face close to hers.

“Do you think you can find your way to Ned's house?” she asked him, in a low tone.

“Yes,” Lyle answered. “Me and Pa, we've been there a lot.”

“Riding a trail with your pa and riding one by yourself are two different things, Lyle,” his mother told him. “I wouldn't make you risk it if I had a choice, but I don't. You need to slip out the back of the barn and ride down the creek a ways, before you turn back to the trail.”

Lyle felt scared all of a sudden. He had only meant to go poke at crawdads with a stick. He did not understand why the lights were in the hills, or why he had to go to Ned's, or why his mother had squeezed his jaw and whispered to him in a serious tone. He had never ridden very far without his pa—what if he got lost, and a bear ate him?

“There's some men on the hill,” Dale said. “I expect it's a posse from Arkansas. You've got to go to Ned's and tell him the posse's coming, Lyle. If they take him by surprise, they'll kill him.”

“But they ain't at Ned's, Ma . . . they're here,” Lyle pointed out.

“They're here, but they won't stay,” Dale explained. “You need to leave by the back door of the barn, and you need to leave now— before it gets any lighter, else they'll see you.”

“What'll I say if they stop me?” Lyle asked. “They might take me to jail.”

“No, they won't . . . you're a boy, and you ain't done nothing,” his mother said. “I doubt they're bad enough to disturb ten-year-olds. Now get!”

“I wish Pa could go,” Lyle said. But he said it to himself. His mother was already slipping back toward the house, holding the baby to her breast as she moved along.

Lyle took the colt back into the barn, and then out the back door before he mounted. He was not worried about the trail, or about the men up in the hills—he was only worried about bears. He did not believe the colt could outrun a bear; he began to regret contemplating the crawdad hunt at all. Now he might get eaten, and all because he wanted to get back at his sisters.

But his mother had told him to go, and he did not dare linger. The one thing that cheered him a bit was that Ned Christie's new wife made good flapjacks. Maybe when he got there, she would make him some, for being so brave about the bears.

D
ALE
M
ILLER STOOD AT HER KITCHEN WINDOW, BURPING HER NEW-BORN
baby, Sarah, as the possemen came slowly down the hill toward her house. There were ten riders in all. The lead man was a short, red-haired fellow riding a pinto. He wore an old grey jacket that looked like it had once been part of a Confederate uniform. The other men wore long coats, and carried rifles across their saddles.

“It's ten of them, Tuxie,” she said. “They've raised a force to take Ned.”

Tuxie had just saucered his coffee. He had looked forward to a peaceful breakfast, but it looked as if peace was over. He sipped some coffee anyway, since the posse was still a good fifty yards away.

“If it's only ten, I doubt they'll take Ned,” Tuxie replied. “Ned will shoot five or six of them, and the rest will run.”

“Yes, but then they'll come back,” Dale said. “When they come back, there'll be twenty of them, or thirty. I doubt it will end until he's dead.”

“Oh, now . . . ,” Tuxie said. He did not believe it would go that far.

Dale was thinking of Jewel. The girl had no idea what it meant to be a mother; she was only just learning what it meant to be a wife. Now a posse of ten riders had come looking for her husband—and they looked to be a rough bunch, too.

“All this is because Zeke Proctor couldn't be content with his wife,” Dale said. “He slipped out with a woman, and now there's war.”

“Well, but that wasn't Ned's fault,” Tuxie said. He was hungry for sausage, but the posse was nearly there.

“Ned went to court with him—
that
was the fault,” Dale said. “He should have stayed home and let Zeke worry about his own foolishness.

“It's when you don't mind your own business that things like this get started,” she added, with a pointed look at Tuxie.

Then she started outside to face the posse. Tuxie got up to come with her, reaching for his big shotgun as he rose.

“Leave that gun, Tuxie,” she ordered. “There's ten of them. I don't want you to give them a reason to shoot you.”

Tuxie reluctantly left the gun. The only person he recognized, when he stepped out the door, was Bill Pigeon—and he looked an awful sight. His pants seemed to have been burned off him, and his bare legs were blistered and raw looking. Bill was shivering and shaking, as if he had the chills. They had tied him to his horse.

The red-headed man in the old Confederate jacket rode over to parley. He rode so close that Tuxie had to turn his head or else have the horse slobber on him.

“We're U.S. marshals,” the redhead informed him. “We've come for Ned Christie. Bring him out.”

“Oh, Ned don't live here,” Tuxie informed the red-headed man. “This is the Miller farm.”

The redhead glanced at Bill Pigeon, who was shivering as if he had pneumonia.

“Bill Pigeon says that's his horse in the lots,” the redhead said. “If his horse is here, I expect he is, too.”

“Nope, he ain't,” Tuxie said. “His horse was rode down, so he left it with us and borrowed one of ours to go on a trip.”

A lank man broke from the group, loped down to the lots, rode into the barn, and loped back. Tuxie did not like the lank man's looks, or the redhead's, either. He was building up a little irritation from having to stand so close to a slobbering horse. But it was his farm, and he did not intend to back up just because the man was rude and rode his horse too close to a person. He thought Dale had been wrong not to allow him to bring the shotgun. The red-headed Reb probably would not have ridden the horse right into his face if he had been armed with his shotgun.

Dale herself had not said a word, which was unusual. She stood
beside him silently, keeping her eyes to herself. She still had baby Sarah over her shoulder, trying to get her to relieve her belly with a good burp.

“We ain't got grub enough to offer you breakfast, but you're welcome to water your horses, if they're thirsty,” Tuxie said, in an effort to be polite.

The lank man rode up beside the redhead, and a third rider, the tallest and roughest of the lot, joined them.

“Did you find the colt?” he asked, looking at the lank man.

“No colt,” the lank man answered. “Just that grey horse, and two plow mules.”

“Did you find the colt's tracks, then?” the tall man asked. One of his hands rested on his pistol butt. He took the gun out of its holster, and began to click the hammer.

The lank man looked startled.

“You didn't tell me to track it, Tail,” he said. “It ain't in the barn, though—I looked.”

“There was a colt in that barn earlier today,” the man clicking the pistol said. “I heard it whinny. Now if I send you to locate a colt, and it ain't there, tracking it would be one way to locate it, wouldn't it, Marshal Ankle?”

“I believe that would just be common sense, wouldn't it?” he added, in a tone as sharp as a rattler's fangs. “I don't like to lose track of a colt when we're trying to arrest a dangerous criminal. For all I know, Ned Christie could have caught that colt and ridden off on it. Get out of the way, Beezle.”

The redhead looked agitated.

“What?” he asked.

Just as the redhead turned to look at the tall man in the dusty black coat, the man backhanded him with the pistol, right in the face. The redhead did not fall off his horse, but when the pistol hit his face, it made a sound like a tree branch cracking in a heavy wind. Blood began to pour out of his mouth, along with a goodly number of the man's teeth.

“Clean out your ears so you can hear an order when I give it. I despise having to repeat myself,” the tall man said. “And the order was, get out of my way!”

The redhead immediately jerked his horse backward, enabling the tall man to lean over and backhand the fellow who had been remiss in
not tracking the colt. The pistol barrel caught the man across the forehead, knocking him backward off his horse. The blow had been a hard one; the lank man did not so much as twitch, once he hit the ground.

Tailcoat Jones then turned his attention to the Millers, smiling an icy smile.

“Excuse my manners,” he said. “It's deuced hard to get competent help in Arkansas. Was it Ned Christie took the colt?”

Tuxie was startled to hear that the colt was gone. He had supposed the animal had merely wandered into the barn.

“No, Ned ain't here, and he ain't been here since he borrowed that horse,” he explained. “That colt belongs to our boy Lyle. If it ain't there, Lyle must have slipped off early.”

“Slipped off and went where?” Tailcoat inquired. He believed the Indian. He looked too honest to lie.

But then there was the white woman. No woman, white or Indian, was too honest to lie, not when a friend was involved—or a child.

“Crawdad fishing, I expect,” Tuxie said. “There's a big patch of crawdad nests about a mile down the creek. If Lyle ain't on his pallet, then I expect that's where he's gone.”

He started to ask Dale if she had seen Lyle that morning, but thought better of it. The man on the ground still had not twitched. His forehead had been sliced open by the blow from the gun barrel, so clean that Tuxie could see his skull-bone. The tall fellow who complained of poor help had whipped the pistol around so quick that Tuxie had not really even seen it, though he sure heard the barrel hit. A man could die from a lick that hard, delivered right to the forehead. In such circumstances, Tuxie thought he should leave his wife out of the discussion.

Tailcoat Jones looked at the woman. Though she had not spoken, she had an impudent stance. His suspicion was that she had slipped out somehow and sent the boy off to warn Ned Christie. He had a notion to take her over by the woodpile and have her horsewhipped for her treachery.

He considered whipping her, for a moment. He particularly hated to be interfered with by some damn sly female with a brat at her teat. But if he whipped the woman, he would have to shoot the husband, and he did not want to start the day by shooting the husband, whom he had nothing against.

“That's a fine brat. Do you have others?” he asked the woman, who had yet to raise her eyes.

“We've been blessed with ten children, all healthy,” Dale said, in as neutral a voice as she could manage.

“That's a passel of blessing,” Tailcoat said pleasantly. “I'd advise you to get 'em out of the house promptly, so they can keep their health.”

“Why?” Tuxie asked, puzzled. “It's barely sunup. Most of them are still asleep.”

“Hush up, Tuxie, do as the man says,” Dale said. Then she went on in the house and began to gather up the children. Tuxie followed her inside, flustered. He wanted to grab the shotgun and fight, but when he had the gun in his hands, Dale yanked it away and told him just to get the children and not forget any—she knew they must not forget a single one of them.

By the time they were all back outside, the marshals had already fired the house. The man with the split-open forehead had revived and was on his feet, wandering around by the well, moaning that he was blind.

Dale noticed that one of the raiders was missing. She could only count nine. She hoped the other one was too slow to catch her Lyle. The colt was fleet, at least; if Lyle had not pussyfooted too long about leaving, she considered that he had a good chance of making it to Ned's.